A Tight Turn

This weekend turned out to be great weather for training.  Saturday I went up to South Carolina to land at Hilton Head.  I did not shut down and actually never left the active movement area so no chance of spreading or getting germs.

On the way back I was planning to stop at Keystone for some cheap gas.  They have airplane gas for $2.58/gallon which is a really good deal.  As I was coming across the Florida border I noticed showers forming over the airport from what became Tropical Storm Arthur.  Not wanting to fuel in the rain, I diverted and tucked the plane back in the hangar. 

Looking at the weather this morning, it was a perfect opportunity to train and get gas.  I filed to 42J (Keystone) via BUHAR.  BUHAR is an imaginary point in space which we can find with our GPS equipment.  Why BUHAR, well the weather was cloudy so I would need to do an approach to find the field and BUHAR was a legal starting point.

Heading out I had some broken clouds and initially was in and out.  This became solid in and then I was above them cloud surfing at 3000.  I was cleared direct BUHAR and things were looking good.  I planned to let the autopilot do this one.  The approach was loaded and active and with the GPS steering, the plane would get to BUHAR, make the right turn, fly to TOLBY, make another right and once I was heading straight in, I just needed to hit the approach key and the plane would capture both the lateral and vertical guidance and take me down to the runway.

The one complication is that the approach  takes you 2.5 North East of Gainesville and they had departing traffic.  The controller offered a vector around or I could get a vector straight in but tight.  I chose tight.  This added a bit of pressure but I had briefed the plate and was ready.

I disengaged the autopilot and hand flew the initial portion.  I was turned to 300 degrees and descended to 2000.  Since I was now in tight I needed to boogie on down.  I configured for 700 feet per minute and as I was reaching 2000 got my turn to 20 degrees to join final.  On the way down I had reset the GPS and activated Vectors to final. 

Rolling out aligned, I re-engaged the autopilot in approach mode.  It was tracking and I watched the glide slope come alive.  At intercept the gear came down and the plane started descending.  300 feet later I popped out of the clouds with the runway in sight.

By the time I fueled, the clouds had started to break up and I was able to see home from 20 miles out and accept the visual approach.  After putting the plane away, I saw one of the airport residents.  He wanders around but is sort of quiet.  He did pose for me though.

Sunset

I don't usually fly much at night but I do like to keep current.  The rules say that to carry passengers at night you must make 3 landings to a full stop at least 1 hour after sunset.  Why one hour, well it is not really dark at sunset.  In fact, as long as you are on the ground within 30 minutes of sunset, it is not a night flight.

Last Saturday the weather was pretty perfect and I decided to get night current.  Sunset was at 8:04 so I too off around 8:40 and did some sightseeing on the West side.  I then headed into JAX international for 2 stop and goes. 

Craig only has 4000 feet which makes stop and goes less attractive.  At JAX I had 8000 feet to land stop and then go.  After my 2 landings at JAX I headed back for my final landing at home.  I put the plane away and was current again.

I like sunset flights but unless you are night current the clock is ticking as soon as the sun sets.  You need to be on the ground in 30 minutes or less.  With my currency, I was no longer under this constraint.  With such incredible weather, I asked CC if she wanted to go watch the sun set with me.

Sunset had moved to 8:08 but that sunset is for those people on the ground.  At 3500 feet, it was 8:14.  We took off at 7:45 and enjoyed the pre show.  We took a swing down the beach and then over downtown to see the buildings in the last bits of light.

Then we headed South of Navy Jax for the big event.  I turned East as it got close to setting and then made a wide turn to the right to bring the main event into view.  It is pretty amazing, you can actually see the disk sinking below the horizon (Take that Flat Earthers).

Once the sun was gone, I eased back on the controls ans started a gentle climb.  A few hundred feet later the edge of the sun slid over the edge of the earth.  I dropped the nose and started down, making the sun set again, was a double header.  As we descended twilight faded rapidly. 

We took our time heading back and landed just before the end of twilight so technically it was not a night flight.  As we pushed the plane back in the hangar we could see the moon rising over the now dark airport.  Was a great way to enjoy the weather while social distancing.

All dressed up... and no way to help

We are now weeks into the COVID lock down.   It has been a bit frustrating as the plane is generally a very useful tool in a disaster and can be put to good use in other times.  After hurricanes we have hauled supplies and I use it to volunteer with the Coast Guard among other activities.  Our Coast Guard support is shut down now as proper social distancing precludes getting a crew and there has been no need to move supplies by air.

With no need for our services in this Pandemic, I feel all dressed up with nowhere to go.   This is somewhat new as at the beginning I did not have the plane.  The planes annual inspection was due by end of March.  I dropped the plane off in late March and then the waiting started.  It usually takes about 10 days but this time I had to send the prop out for an upgrade.  The machine shop that does the upgrade was really backed up and I ended up waiting a lot longer than planned.  The plane came home April 16.

Yes we did a contact less pickup.  The shop emailed an invoice.  I showed up and placed a check down without approaching anyone and went right to the plane which had been left on the ramp for me.  A thorough preflight ensued including a cockpit wipe down, had a quick chat with the mechanic from a safe distance and then I headed home.

Air traffic is way off but the controllers are really busy.  Jacksonville for example usually has 5 sectors running, each with a controller.  Checking in South of St. Augustine with Jacksonville, it was clear that one person was controlling all 5 sectors.  This was later confirmed by one of the controllers I know through social media.

The plane is back and everything is dialed in.  I spent the weekend training and cleaning.   This included taking advantage of the low clouds and absence of traffic Sunday to work on my instrument skills and extend my currency.  The question is now what?  While the plane is loads of fun, it is also a tool that usually come in handy when things go stinky bad, just not this time.

It is safe to fly locally as I can accomplish this without getting near another person. Going to most locations for a visit would violate social distancing.  For now my focus is on training and currency.  I do need to keep the engine running to keep it healthy so I am going back to basics and will work on skills previously perfected in past advanced training that may have become a bit rusty.  After work today CC and I did a quick flight.  The weather was exceptional and we had some fun with the Go Pro.  If you are sick of Netflix, have a look.

Keeping our distance

We had scheduled a trip for last week and decided to cancel with the spread of the pandemic.  It may have been an abundance of caution but figured we did not want to become a vector.  The plane still needs to run to keep it healthy and so do we.  We try to be efficient so we combined the activities.

We flew up to Jekyll Island again this morning.  The weather was perfect and we parked and headed out to walk from the airport to the foot of the causeway. 

We were able to do this while avoiding close contact with people.  It seemed a bit lighter on the tourists though there were not many spaces left when we arrived at the airport.

The walk down the West shore is quite nice.  We have walked up to the club several times but never further South.  Initially we had lots of gnats but we finally got a gentle breeze and they had enough and landed.

There was a wedding set up at the club so some events are proceeding.

Lots of wildlife out "Squirrel".  I also enjoy the Spanish moss on the trees.

I took a bunch of pictures with the new camera.  I am enjoying the smaller lighter package.

When I looked at the weather I thought it might be a bit cool but it quickly warmed today and our light clothe and sunscreen were a good idea.

The flight back was as smooth as the one up, small plane air traffic does not seem impacted yet.

Annual starts next week so I will be grounded for a few weeks soon.  Will have to drive to my long walks. 

The Blue and The Gray

No this is not a civil war post.  We had a Birthday party to attend in Atlanta.  It was mid day Sunday and we decided to leave Saturday to get some extra time with the Birthday boy, he is now 3.  Leaving Saturday it was blue.  Like really blue.

Arriving into Atlanta things were easy.  I have learned and had filed the correct arrival.  Controllers seemed happy and we even got a bit of a shortcut on the way into Peachtree Dekalb airport.  This included a nice view of Stone Mountain.

The whole way over I kept saying, I can't believe the weather is going to stink Sunday.  We arrived, had a great time at the playground, ate and then settled in.  The forecast was for low rainy weather across all of Georgia but at midnight, it was still clear across the entire South East.

We awoke to rain and clouds. First a line of rain came through and then the clouds started getting lower.  We headed off to the party but decided to book before cake.  It was a good move.  I had been watching things and there was a break to the East.

Departing Atlanta it was smooth and cloudy but little rain until about 50 miles out.  Then we entered the rain zone where it was light to moderate for the next hour plus.  We headed towards Savannah to get around the heavy stuff.  We were mostly between layers and it didn't look too bad to the sides but we had little visibility ahead with the rain.

We had a few minutes of bigger rain drops as we passed North of Dublin, then it went back to steady medium.  I had been concerned about ice higher up so we stayed at 7000 where the temperatures were 45 to 47F.  About 30 North of Jacksonville we broke out and had an easy visual approach back home.  We put the plane away and I watched the weather some more, it had closed up behind us and then really gone down.  Glad we scooted early and made it home before it intensified.

How slow can you go

My last post was about speed. This one is the absence of speed.  Looking at the GPS lower left corner you can see the ground speed is 0.0 knots.  So what you say, anyone can sit in a plane and not go anywhere.  True but if you look closely in the picture I am sitting just off the coast of Saint Augustine above the surf, not going anywhere.

We often discuss that the plane only care about the apparent wind and not the actual ground speed.  Thus if I am going 90 knots air speed and the wind is blowing 90 knots, the plane is actually standing still.  Below is the primary flight display shows no ground speed while I am indicating 76 knots. 

I was actually still moving 2 knots at that point.  I slowed down a bit more and was actually moving backwards at 3 knots.  It was a fun thing to do and demonstrated what we all learn in theory in groundschool.

Speed 2 (339.25 mph)

No not the movie.  My second blog post was about setting a ground speed record of 264 knots or 303.6 mph.  The day of the record, Samantha and I had no plans for this but during preflight planning I noticed the winds would be in the 70s.  We climbed up into the wind turned around and set the record.

Thursday I was looking at the weekend and thinking about flying plans.  It didn't look good with 2 cold fronts coming Saturday.  I started to play with some routes anyway and noticed they would have crazy high headwinds.  I then pulled up the Windy app and started looking at the wind patterns. 

It looked like Saturday afternoon, the winds would be 90-100 knots at 12-14 thousand North of Jacksonville.  This got me thinking, if the front moved through, I could possibly launch, fly Northwest and catch a major wind.

I needed to break 73 knots for a new record. Saturday morning was rainy as predicted but I was not fooled.  The front was moving and at 2 PM I headed to the airport even though it was barely VFR.  By the time I had everything ready, the weather had much improved.

One area that concerned me was icing.  There was an Airmet for Icing above 8000 but my study of the atmosphere showed that the cold air had not yet arrived and that I should not encounter any issues.  Also the clouds were all down low so I did not intend to be in visible moisture (clouds) anywhere near the freezing level.

The final issue was turbulence.  Going fast requires smooth air.  My briefing had several Airmets for possible moderate turbulence in the area.  There is no way to really see turbulence you have to go out and see what is really happening.  So with icing and turbulence as two possible abort items, I headed out.

I left on an IFR plan and climbed to 9000.  I wanted to minimize my time up high due to the lower oxygen levels.  The rules say you can be between 12,500 and 14,000 up to 30 minutes.  I was going to be up there much less.

Heading up the winds kept increasing but as I neared Alma, they started to drop.  The models said the best winds would be at Alma at 4:00 PM, It was 3:50.  I cancelled IFR so I would have freedom to maneuver.  I decided to head up a few miles early and climbed to 13,500.  Up there the winds were a bit less than I had seen in the climb but the wind correction angle was so great I think the computer may have mis-estimated the winds.

After stabilizing at near cruise speed I was making 254 knots level.  I then pushed the nose over gently watched the speed build to the top of the green.  The numbers kept increasing until I got to 298 knots or 339.25 mph.  I would have liked to get to 300 but maybe another day.

Heading home there were still some clouds to get through.  I had thought of this.  I had filed a second flight plan from MNARD intersection to home.  So after checking in with the new controller, she gave me my clearance and I pretty much descended all the way home.  Not getting 300 is bittersweet but it does leave me with a new challenge.